Boneyard Arcade Brings Back the Memories

Arcades have changed a lot over time and, even though they are not as prevalent as they once were, there has been a steady rise in small centres where you pay an admission fee and get the machines on free play or a contactless pay system on the machines. Whatever model these arcades use, it's fine with me to be able to play original and refurbished machines which give the feel and create the atmosphere of the arcades of my youth.

Living in London, these arcades or barcades were easy enough to find but here, in the South West, the only machines I would find would be the odd ones here and there or ticket redemption spitting machines. The piers and coastal arcades around here would have the occasional arcade machine but that would be the more modern machines with the occasional Guitar Hero machine thrown in.

Boneyard Arcade in Exeter is different though. Run by two brothers with a love for gaming, it features original and refurbed machines. Importantly though, it contains many vintage and classic arcade and pinball machines including:
Tempest
Galaga
Centipede
Asteroids
Sega Rally
Ms. Pacman
Star Wars: Arcade
DDR
and various Mame enabled compilation machines.

I went with my daughters for the first time for my birthday and we had a blast. The atmosphere was family friendly (we did go at 2pm though) and the noise was a nostalgic rush of memories. The £5 contactless card for 20 credits system worked well and, with nearly all the games costing 1 credit, actually incredibly reasonably priced.

With £10 of credit to hand we played most of the machines but our favourites were Star Wars Arcade, Asteroids, Galaga and Tempest.

I've still got about 18 credits left on my card so will definitely visit again. I think this is going to become a part of my bi-monthly comic shop, videogame shopping and arcades routine. Boy, that kinda takes me back to my youth in Barking with the library, Cash Convertors and Rodney's comic shop trinity.

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Gamers To The Rescue After £5000 Robbery From Beloved Arcade

The Heart of Gaming, one of the only remaining arcades in London, was robbed on the 22nd July. The arcade is popular with gamers as alongside the modern consoles are retro machines and old gaming cabinets with classics such as Donkey Kong, Street Fighter 2 and House of the Dead. 

The Heart Of Gaming in North Acton is one of the last bastions of gaming


The thieves took more than £5,000 worth of equipment which included the most recent consoles, games and peripherals. Thankfully the arcade machines were left untouched, the thieves targeting smaller more saleable items. 

Luckily the arcade machines were untouched.

The timing of the robbery could not be worse, any time is a bad time to be robbed, but just at the start of the school holidays is very unfortunate. Mark Starkey (owner of the HOG) and April Periera-Finn (Manager of the HoG) sought to galvanise the support from their large community and fanbase and through a gofund campaign sought to gain £5000 to replace the stolen items and smashed their target within two days (at the time of writing this article the total reached was £5430). The response has been fantastic and what is so heartening to see is that many people who donated have not even been to the HOG but wanted to help such an important cause for the gaming community. With the funds achieved anything extra is going towards buying security cameras and furnishing the building with higher security doors. Who said that the gaming community was toxic? This is the community coming together to help a cause they believe in. Long live the HOG!

LINK- HOG Gofund